City Council Meets Tonight

The Claremont City Council eases back into action tonight with a somewhat modest schedule following its August recess. At 5:15pm, the council will meet in closed session for a conference with labor negotiators regarding the Claremont Professional Employees Association. The council will also be discussing price and terms of a prospective agreement with Arteco Partners over the Padua Theatre.

The regular council meeting begins at 6:30pm with a number of routine administrative items, including the introduction of three new commissioners:

• Angela Bekzadian-Avila, Human Services
  
• Rosemary Fisher-Anaya, Police Commission
• Sayeed Shaikh, Police Commission
  

The council will also accept the resignation of Human Services Commission Chair Gwen Carr. No word on why Carr stepped down, but you can bet that fellow Human Services Commissioner Valerie Martinez had more than a little to do with the resignation. The word on the street is that Martinez, who was the spokeswoman and brains behind the Claremonsters' Preserve Claremont campaign, maneuvered against Carr's appointment to commission chair and seems to have continued to work against Carr by manipulating her fellow, less-aware commissioners.

In addition, the council will also vote on a resolution against the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Measure R sales tax increase. The resolution also expresses support for the Gold Line.

Other items on tonight's council agenda include a discussion of the elements of a proposed mansionization ordinance that would try to implement tighter controls over the sorts of homes that can be built in town, as well as the adoption of a residential parking permit policy.

The parking issue came up previously with the residents on Via Santa Caterina in the Claraboya neighborhood. That neighborhood sits at the trailhead for Johnson's Pasture, and the residents there have complained of parking and crime problems since the city purchased Johnson's Pasture. Via Santa Caterina residents might want to take a closer look at our Forked Tongues post from yesterday. From what we're hearing, the city's trail of broken promises is growing, so don't get too comfortable with the parking situation on Via Santa Caterina.

Reporter Wes Woods II had an article on the parking permit issue:

City staff has recommended the City Council establish such a program and, if approved at tonight's council meeting, the ordinance could be adopted by the end of October.

Councilwoman Linda Elderkin said the ordinance "authorizes ground rules for setting up possible parking areas by permit and the rules for doing that."

Elderkin added: "The first important thing is this policy does not authorize any particular area yet."

The neighborhoods identified in the agenda report as being interested in the ordinance include College Avenue between Foothill Boulevard and Seventh Street; Baughman Avenue between Berkeley Avenue and Indian Hill Boulevard, and the residential area to the west of the Village Expansion. A residential permit for Via Santa Catarina has been established through a separate ordinance.

Officials noted Monday that the ordinance states "a finding would have to be made that no alternative to the proposed zone exists that is feasible or practical."

Permits would cost between $12 and $14 each and would be established with each resolution that creates the separate permit zones in the city, said city engineer Craig Bradshaw.

The police chief, or designee, would be responsible for issuing permits and no more than four permits per address would be issued, Bradshaw said.

A word to the wise, don't put too much stock in anything the city engineer, Police Chief Paul Cooper, or the city's chief planner Lisa Prasse have to say. Those holdovers from the Glenn Southard-era are among the worst of Claremont's Promise Breakers, and we'll try to fill in the blanks as soon as we get more details.

City Council Meeting
- Closed Session, 5:15pm
- Regular Session, 6:30pm
Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont, CA 91711
(909) 399-5460

City Identifies Prime Cause of Downtown Parking Problems

The Village parking problem was supposed to get some attention at last night's Claremont City Council meeting. Specifically, the council was supposed to consider an ordinance that was supposed to help prevent so-called "vehicle shuffling" that adds to the parking nightmares people trying to visit the Claremont Village face with cars stacked up hither and yon filling every possible available space.

A Claremont Courier article by Tony Krickl last week explained the ordinance and the reasons for needing it:

City staff hopes that the “No-Vehicle Shuffling” ordinance will deter business employees from constantly moving their cars to different parking spots within the Village every few hours to avoid being ticketed.

The ordinance would also open up more parking spots to paying customers, a move that some believe will boost business and make the Village a greater attraction.

Something happened, however, that caused the issue to be pulled from the council's agenda for last night. The city's official website carried this bit of news:

A public notice was published stating that the Village Parking Proposed Ordinance would be on the July 8, 2008 City Council meeting agenda. This ordinance has been pulled from that agenda, pending further review by the City Manager. For further information, call Craig Bradshaw, City Engineer, at (909) 399-5465.

Parking policy wonks weren't completely shut out last night, however. The city council spent some time having a discussion of an appeal of a Claremont Planning Commission decision to approve a 162,000 square-foot academic and administrative building on the Claremont McKenna Campus.

As a condition of approval, CMC was required to submit a document showing that they would provide adequate parking for the building. This requirement was part of a new ordinance the city council approved recently to help alleviate downtown parking problems and the adverse parking impacts created by new projects.

So, the Planning Commission in June approved the CMC project and its parking management plan. However, a number of Claremonters, including former Mayor Judy Wright and Ginger Elliot, both very active in Claremont Heritage, objected to the CMC parking plan because it counted parking spots that were nowhere near the new building. For instance, CMC counted parking spots at properties CMC owns in the Arbol Verde section of Claremont - spots that are far enough away from the new building that people going there would not use them.

Seems clear, right? Looks like CMC is playing a numbers game in its parking plan and should be required to rewrite it with more realistic parking projections and mitigations.

Wrong. During the discussion, City Attorney Sonia Carvalho stepped in to quash the discussion by pointing out that the new ordinance requiring a parking plan to be submitted contains no provision for review.

All a developer has to do is submit a plan, any plan, and it must be accepted by the city without review. All those people who showed up ready to argue for or against the CMC project had to sit down. There were no grounds for an appeal because the city's ordinance has no provision for appeals. The city forgot to include that.

Chalk another one up to that crackerjack city staff that wrote the policy, to City Attorney Carvalho, who was supposed to review the ordinance for any such defects before it was approved, and to the Claremont City Council for approving an ordinance with a very serious deficiency. City Planner Lisa Prasse said that was not the intent of the law, but there you have it.

All in all, it was an embarrassing night for everyone who reviewed and voted on the new ordinance, and all (with the exception of Carvalho, who hardly ever admits an error) seemed to acknowledge this was a big mistake.

Claremont, Arteco: Bad Neighbors?

The Claremont Planning Commission meets tonight at 7pm in the City Council Chambers in Claremont's City Hall.

Item number two on the agenda is the Arteco Partners proposal for the Padua Theatre. City staff is recommending that the commission adopt a resolution stating that Arteco's requested uses for the theatre are consistent with the Claremont Hills Specific Plan.

The staff report on the Arteco item by the city's senior planning incompetent Lisa Prasse (a holdover from the Glenn Southard administration) cites the sections of the Specific Plan that are supposed to support the resolution.

Naturally, as a reader informs us, Prasse's staff report is completely wrong in its arguments. There's been no active Padua Theatre in over 30 years. In the meantime, residential areas - approved by past Claremont City Councils and Planning Commissions - have surrounded the location. The theatre is currently used only on weekends for weddings.

Further, when the theatre was active, it was dry - no alcohol. Arteco, however, anticipates a possible restaurant and daily events with alcohol served. Historically, contrary to the staff report, the activity was far different from the ones being planned.

Similarly, there was no bed-and-breakfast business at the theatre. This is an entirely new activity, and one is now planned to be placed there. So, the argument that there was a historical use for a B & B also fails.

Given those factors, the reader says what is required here is an amendment to the Specific Plan. Prasse and the City are trying to cut corners in order to please the Claremonsters and Arteco. Not very neighborly, the reader says, and possible grounds for litigation.

* * *

Item number four on the Planning Commission's agenda is a discussion of mansionization. Here is staff report by the city's Director of Community Development, Tony Witt, or T. Witt, as he is known in some circles.

Claremont Planning Commission Meeting - 7pm
Claremont City Council Chambers
225 W. 2nd St.
Claremont

City to Darlene and Dave Matteson: DROP DEAD

Claremont Marijuana Ordinance Draft Available

Dave and Darlene Matteson at a recent city council meeting

The long-awaited draft medical marijuana dispensary ordinance is up on the City of Claremont website. Unfortunately for tenacious advocates Darlene and Dave Matteson, they wont be able to purchase their dime bags in Claremont unless they move to town from Upland: all "patients" must be Claremont residents. [sorry, it's just impossible to write this phrase without the scare quotes; there are no quotes around "patient" in the original]

Dave and Darlene in happier times

The draft ordinance, found on the City website here, comprises ten densely-packed pages. There are restrictions on the permit itself. There are lots of restrictions on operation: we like 5.50.40.A, "Operator shall not be engaged in interstate commerce of marijuana." Only home-grown bud. There are loads of operational restrictions, security measures, and enforcement provisions.

One curiosity: Section 5.50.20 is blank. It's "RESERVED", in the parlance of the City. We wondered what possibly could be missing from this lengthy exercise in rule-making. It finally hit us, and then, sure enough, the omission we came up with is addressed in Section 5, on page ten. Where is this community amenity going to be located? They don't know yet. Section 5 reads, "The Moratorium shall remain in effect until such time as the locational criteria for the establishment of a dispensary has [sic, we don't create this verbiage, we just copy it] been adopted and becomes [sic, same problem] effective."

But notice, all you vipers out there. The City will bring in an ordinance--this one--within the allotted time of the current moratorium, but it won't be complete, and Hell will effectively freeze over before the "locational criteria" are ever established. Oh, Lisa Prasse--her name appears in the document ID fields--and her cohort are clever rascals.

And if you thought the Padua Park and affordable housing wars brought out the NIMBYs, just wait until the medical marijuana dispensary comes to your neighborhood. Our suggestion: Put it on one of the college campuses; no one would notice the parking problem and town-and-gown relations would never be better.

For those of you who were not sentient in 1975, our headline came from this:

Zoning Changes

Tomorrow night, the Claremont City Council will be voting on approval of the zoning changes proposed as part of the city's new General Plan. The council will be meeting it its chambers at City Hall at 225 W. 2nd St. at 6:30 p.m.

The city's website offers a link to information on the General Plan, which was approved by the City Council in November, 2006. The city also offers a zoning map showing the proposed changes (patience, it's a large PDF file).

The Claremont Courier's Saturday edition ran an article by Tony Krickl about some residents in two neighborhoods close by the Village West expansion area who are unhappy with their neighborhoods receiving new mixed-use zoning designations. The new zoning for those areas in question will allow for condos and apartments in the future. Unfortunately, the Courier's website doesn't carry the article, so you'll have to pick up a copy if you're interested.

According to the article, some of the residents in the areas affected by the changes were upset with the city and City Planner Lisa Prasse. The article said the residents "felt they were being marginalized by the city after hearing Ms. Prasse describe the zoning changes as a 'housekeeping matter' that would affect only about 6 percent of the city's properties."

Prasse, a holdover from the days of former Claremont City Manager Glenn Southard, may be falling into her old imperious habits. Her modus operandi under Southard was to push projects through, holding public Planning Commission meetings that ran more like slick dog-and-pony shows. Expect more of the same tomorrow night.